Kenya Power Chief Executive Officer, Joseph Siror, believes that using electricity to boil succotash, locally known as githeri, is significantly cheaper than both gas and charcoal.
Appearing as a panellist on Tuesday's Nation Media Group Leadership Forum alongside Energy CS Davis Chirchir, the CEO argued that using an electric cooker costs only Ksh20 per cooking session.
He further noted that Kenya Power was willing to ascertain his claims in a bid to boost the uptake of clean energy for cooking, which has been slow across the country due to the unreliability of power.
"You can boil 'Githeri' with Ksh 20 worth of electricity. The perception that using electricity to cook is costly is wrong," Siror argued.
"Cooking with electricity is very cheap and we are willing to demonstrate this to our consumers."
However, the CEO's claim did not sit well with Kenyans, who lamented that their power bills had already shot up and adopting electric cookers would only worsen the situation.
After doing the maths, a user identifying herself as Erling Sholla discovered that electricity worth Ksh20 in Kenya translates to 0.7 kilowatts, which she argued could not properly cook a meal.
"O.7kw can't cook even ugali and vegetables," Sholla countered.
"Using a pressure cooker with 0.7kw that is equivalent to Ksh20? Coils use 1kw per hour," she wondered.
Others argued that the corporate hotshot failed to incorporate the high cost of purchasing electric household goods, a bracket many Kenyans had been locked out of.
On the market, a standard electric cooker is valued at not less than Ksh20,000, a figure exceeding the monthly income of many Kenyan households.
Other individuals, however, sided with the CEO, noting that using electricity to cook was significantly cheaper and more convenient.
"It's true. You, however, need to invest in a pressure cooker - now that part's expensive, but it pays itself back," one user responded.
Towards the end of July, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) indicated that electricity (50 kilowatts) recorded the highest retail price increase of 65.7 per cent, followed by electricity (200 kilowatts) at 46.6 per cent.
The retail price estimation was conducted between July 2022 and July 2023.
Not only the high token prices but also the unreliability of power prompted another section of Kenyans to question whether cooking with electricity was advisable. The Kenya Power consumers cited the nationwide blackout that put Kenya Power and Energy CS Davis Chirchir in the spotlight.
Chirchir, in response to the grievances, explained that the nationwide blackout experienced on Friday last week was partly caused by the failure of the Ugandan system, which supplies electricity to Kenya.
"The blackout that hit us took long to bring up because it happened when the load uptake for the country was very low," he explained.
"As we brought up the network, two things happened. The load was coming down significantly because we were beginning to slip and secondly, the connection to Uganda was down because some towers on the Ugandan side had been down for a while and there was no interconnection."
Several businesses recorded steep losses as the blackout lasted for nearly 14 hours.
